November 22nd 2014:
Tamir Rice, a Black boy playing in a park in Cleveland, Ohio with a toy airgun, is shot down by police. The police report they gave him three warnings before shooting, that Rice was in his 20s. The video shows them shooting him almost instantly. Tamir Rice is 12.
The two White police officers, Tim Loehmann, the shooter, and Frank Garmback, his partner, let Rice lay there in pain. They do nothing to save his life. When his 14-year-old sister runs to his side, they push her to the ground and handcuff her. Rice dies the next morning at the hospital.
The police investigate themselves. Loehmann and Garmback have not been arrested.
December 2014:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) completes its investigation into the Cleveland police that was already under way when Rice was killed. It reports that the Cleveland police have a pattern of using too much force and violating people’s rights. The DOJ and Cleveland talk about needed reforms.
March 2015:
After the family sues the city for damages, the city blames Rice for his own death: “by the failure … to ensure due care to avoid injury.” They also blame his mother and older sister. The mayor admits the wording was “insensitive”.
The police still have not told Rice’s mother that they are sorry for killing her son. They still have his body.
The police are still investigating themselves.
May 2015:
The family gets Rice’s body back.
Cleveland and the DOJ agree to change policy on the use of force and to train police to be less racist.
The police are still investigating themselves, probably because Loehmann and Garmback have refused to be interviewed.
June 2015:
Ronald Adrine, a Black judge in Cleveland, rules that there is enough evidence to charge Loehmann with murder and Garmback with negligent homicide. He says the ruling is only “advisory”.
Timothy J. McGinty, the White county prosecutor, says the ruling is “irrelevant”: the grand jury will decide.
The police have completed their investigation and give McGinty their 224-page report. Yet McGinty does not move forward to the grand jury.
July 2015:
McGinty receives a petition with 60,000 names demanding that he moves forward with the case.
October 11th 2015:
McGinty makes public two independent reviews of the evidence by well-regarded use-of-force experts: Kimberly A. Crawford, a White retired FBI agent, and S. Lamar Sims, a Black senior chief deputy district attorney in Denver.
Sims and Crawford both conclude that, at least under the US Constitution (they are not experts on Ohio law), Loehmann’s actions were “objectively reasonable”: police have the right to gun you down without warning if they think you have a gun and look like you are reaching for it. Even if you are 12.
Ohio law allows people to openly carry guns.
The police union loves the reports. The lawyer for Rice’s family calls them a whitewash by pro-police “hired guns”.
McGinty has yet to go to the grand jury, four months after the police completed their investigation.
Loehmann and Garmback have not been arrested.
– Abagond, 2015.
Update (October 29th): The grand jury started meeting last week. Loehmann and Garmback gave testimony. In most grand jury hearings, suspects do not get to testify since it is supposed to be about whether there is enough evidence to go to trial, not about trying the case in secret without having suspects cross-examined. The same was done to get Darren Wilson off. The head of the police union: “I have all the confidence in the world in the grand jury system and our system of justice.” Huge, huge red flag. More.
Update (November 17th): McGinty, the county prosecutor, last week made public yet another report that finds the police’s actions “objectively reasonable”. This one is by police consultant W. Ken Katsaris, who also testified in the Michael Brelo case. More.
Update (December 28th): Tamir Rice’s killer walks. The grand jury said it will bring no charges in the death of Tamir Rice. More.
Update (March 17th 2016): Thanks largely to protesters, McGinty has been voted out of office! More.
Images: Voice of Detroit, DOJ.
See also:
- Tamir Rice – the post I wrote 11 days after the shooting
- grand jury – required reading for anyone who wonders how US police get away with murder.
- John Crawford – a very similar case, also in open-carry Ohio. The police were never charged with a crime.
- Michael Brelo – a Cleveland killer cop who got away with killing two unarmed Black people
- Phantom Negro Weapon
- Phantom Caucasian Justice
- The extremely incomplete list of unarmed Blacks killed by police
- Darren Wilson
582
No. Just no. What kind of an excuse is that to kill a child?
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Justice for Tamir May he rest in peace
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May he rest in peace.
Theirs is so much to say about this that one doesn’t know where to begin. It’s heart breaking.
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Did these folks NOT watch the video we all saw?
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a tragedy
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This is why simply hearing the DOJ is looking into the situation is not enough. The fact that they can justfy his murder knowing the history of the cops and the police department in question is sad. I’m scared of the fact that I am numb to this. I’m not shocked or outraged just numb and that scares me. I just know that when these heartless people meet their maker they better have a good reason for this outcome because whatever money or pressure lead them to this decision will not help them get through the gates of heaven. This will not go unpunished and all I can do as always is look to God to serve his vengance.
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The officer who shot and killed Tamir Rice was found to be unfit for duty and unstable in handling firearms in his previous job with another police department while in training yet this seems to be of no consequence.
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Unfortunately, Tamir Rice’s murder says that we, Blacks, have no racial and political power. Had a 12 or 13-year-old Jewish kid been murdered the outcome would’ve been TOTALLY different. Every Jewish person knows that he or she belongs to a powerful race.
Black and Jewish children are seen as “adults” for two different reason. Black children are seen as adults when it comes to being punished by law enforcers or simply the law. Jewish children are seen as adults when it comes to being honored in certain rituals (like the Bar and Bat Mitzvah) under the Jewish law. The Judea (Jewish) and judicial (non-Jewish but Jewish) laws tell us that Blacks and Jewish people serve as polar opposites.
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In playgrounds and open fields, little White kids play with BB guns, regularly. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. Never is the police called! That’s White Privilege 101.
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@Michael Cooper
I hate to say it, but it’s gonna take folks like Loehmann and Garmback meeting the wrong end of a speeding bullet before blacks are taken seriously once more. Say what you want about groups like the IRA and Hezbollah, but there’s a benefit to striking fear into the hearts of your oppressors.
I doubt anyone here wants a version of the Troubles vis-a-vis blacks and whites, but that’s what it’ll have to come to sooner or later.
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Black life is meaningless in Amerikkka. Pretty much everywhere at this point.
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@Mack
“Say what you want about groups like the IRA and Hezbollah, but there’s a benefit to striking fear into the hearts of your oppressors.”
.
They reached a point of Critical Mass… a breaking point!
What will it take to get us to Critical Mass?
A few more hundred years of THIS same old, same old, mistreatment???
As long as enough people have enough to eat, a roof, TV, movies, celebs, coffee, beer, liquor, their favorite SPORTS team, sweets, some money, varying illusions of peace & safety, nothing much will ever change!
Until God says it time ….
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[…] Sourced through Scoop.it from: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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..Damn, I am sO tired of seeing innocent children (and adults, especially Black) being gunned down by these so-called “agents o’ law” (fukcerz)-resulting in them practically always, always getting away with it (at least on this side of life)!!!!! Rest In Peace (and Power), dear Tamir and may your family receive both healing and Justice…<3
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@Michael Cooper
Actually according to a recent study; cops tend to kill white kids with toy guns etc….more often than they do black kids.
They also tend to kill white people more often when the crime being investigated is of a violent or homicidal nature.
Interestingly enough; despite this black people were still 3x more likely to be killed than white people.
Which kind of means that cops are killing black people for crimes that wouldn’t usually be violent. Jay walking etc…..
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Tamir Rice. I am writing this comment from a country that has a very serious and complex crime problem. However, what strikes me is that unequivocally that a white child in both countries would never be treated like a common criminal by either Black or white policemen in either country. That is not to say that there have not been any white child fatalities at the hands of policemen.
For some reason Bigger from the ‘Native Son’ comes to mind when thinking about a Black policeman killing a white child in either country. And there would be no way in hell that a white policeman, either, would get off scot-free, (without the white public baying for his blood) whether it was murder or manslaughter or an accident. Was it not a toy gun? How many white children, in the USA, with real guns are shot dead by policeman?
Whilst it is not the same thing, one can also can look at the horrifying events unfolding in Israel when a thirteen year old Palestinian boy stabbed a Jewish person in Jerusalem recently (When has it not been horrifying for Palestinians?). The Palestinian stone throwing set against science-fiction killing machine weaponry of the full might of the Israeli army.
When I look at the photograph of Tamir, I see the face of a beautiful boy. From what pairs of eyes did those policemen see Tamir? As a parent, I just cannot imagine the pain and anguish his parents have to endure at losing their son in such a way.
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“When I look at the photograph of Tamir, I see the face of a beautiful boy.”
Yes. I see the same. I see Emitt Till too, and all the other dead Black people still awaiting justice, killed by hate and superiority because they dared to step outside of their assigned box – or just breathing in the wrong space at the wrong time.
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Update: The grand jury started meeting last week. Loehmann and Garmback gave testimony. In most grand jury hearings, suspects do not get to testify since it is supposed to be about whether there is enough evidence to go to trial, not about trying the case in secret without having suspects cross-examined! The same was done to get Darren Wilson off.
The head of the police union: “I have all the confidence in the world in the grand jury system and our system of justice.” Huge, huge red flag.
More:
http://newsone.com/3227600/grand-jury-evidence-tamir-rice/
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Update: McGinty, the county prosecutor, last week made public yet another report that finds the police’s actions “objectively reasonable”. This one is by police consultant W. Ken Katsaris, who also testified in the Michael Brelo case.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tamir-rice-family_564691eae4b0603773492bbf
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Update: Tamir Rice’s killer walks. The grand jury said it will bring no charges in the death of Tamir Rice.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/28/tamir-rice-shooting-no-charges-cleveland-officer-timothy-loehmann
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I see it as no accident that this case was “officially” resolved during the holidays. They were hoping the story would go unnoticed on a slow news day during the holiday season.
This is also the time that Congress and State House lameduck legislators pass dirty deal laws that the public doesn’t find out about until later.
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It was the prosecutor’s plan from the beginning. Pathetic and sad
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Heartbreaking and sad.
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Tamir Rice Grand Jury Never Even Voted Whether Or Not To Indict Cop Who Killed Him
http://countercurrentnews.com/2016/01/tamir-rice-grand-jury-never-even-voted/
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@nomad
I guess they voted on whether or not deadly force was justified first. Since they decided it was, there was no need to vote on bringing charges.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/report-raises-questions-about-tamir-rice-grand-jury-n500851
I’m glad to see this case getting another media cycle though. We need to seize every opportunity to remind our kids how fleeting their life can be. What should have ended with a kid being disciplined by his parents for “playing” with a toy gun and pointing it at people in a park (hey, who hasn’t shot unsuspecting people with an airsoft gun?) ended in death instead. I firmly believe Tamir’s race had everything to do with that outcome. This case breaks my heart.
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Just saw this today:
City of Cleveland filed a creditor’s notice against Tamir Rice’s family charging them for his “last dying expense”.
http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2016/02/10/the-city-of-cleveland-filed-a-probate-court-creditors-claim-against-tamir-rices-estate-for-500
So very sick!!!
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Update (March 17th 2016): Thanks largely to protesters, McGinty has been voted out of office!
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2016/03/byeanita-black-women-worked-get-rid-prosectors-cleveland-chicago/
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Did the protesters pick the challenger to McGinty, or is this another case of victory having many fathers?
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The city of Cleveland also dropped the $500 claim against Tamir Rice’s estate:
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Video catches officer Loehmann in a lie or “shifting story” as NBC gently puts it: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/newly-released-interview-footage-reveal-shifting-stories-officers-who-shot-n751401
So where are the perjury charges?
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